Abstract
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been initially defined as a disease of the respiratory tract; however, with the increasing number of patients and announcing that the virus became a pandemic, new systemic clinical manifestations are observed, including dermatological manifestations. However, the identification and characteristics of these manifestations are still controversial. This review article aims to evaluate the medical literature and explore the dermatological clinical manifestations in patients with SARS-CoV-2. The literature was reviewed through MEDLINE®, Ovid, PubMed®, and Embase®. Searching terms included were a combination of "dermatological" OR "skin" AND "symptoms" OR "manifestations" AND "SARS-CoV-2". The following step was filtering the results to include only original research studies investigating the different types of skin and dermatological clinical manifestations in patients with SARS-CoV-2. A total of 879 studies were retrieved. Following the exclusion of studies on animals and including only studies on humans, 32 studies emerged. Altogether, seven studies were identified as eligible, covering 555 patients with SARS-CoV-2 who had dermatological symptoms. Three studies were retrospective, two studies were prospective, and two studies were case series. Different types of dermatological lesions can occur in patients with SARS-CoV-2, most commonly erythema, urticaria, and varicella-like rash. Dermatological manifestations with SARS-CoV-2 can be misdiagnosed with other conditions. Further studies with robust design are needed.
Highlights
BackgroundCoronaviruses are defined as a class of viruses that commonly lead to mild to moderate respiratory tract infections [1]
All the included studies considered the objective of describing the dermatological manifestations of patients with SARS-CoV-2 with varying severity levels in different countries
Erythema and urticaria were common in four studies [14, 17,18,19], varicella-like lesions were defined in three studies [15, 17, 19], while other types of rash were identified in four studies [16,17,18, 20]
Summary
Coronaviruses are defined as a class of viruses that commonly lead to mild to moderate respiratory tract infections [1]. In the last few years, there were some mutations that occurred in coronaviruses leading to transmission from animals to humans [2]. The virulence of the virus has increased, leading to increased mortality. Examples of these viruses are the Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), and the recently explored severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [3]. The transmission rate of the virus started to increase rapidly and progressively till being announced as a pandemic by the WHO in February 2020 [5]
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